Re:What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form
by stevebmark on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @06:15PM
(#37935507)
There's something interestingly poisonous about the demoscene mentality. Write small, hacky, throwaway, non-reusable code, hand minified beyond readability. Unit tests aren't relevant. You can see this mentality infect WebGL systems and places like Shadertoy. There's a tension between "software engineering" (whatever you want to call it) and demoscene hackers.
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Re:What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form
by intelVISA on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @06:37PM
(#37935726)
Software 'engineers' see the demoscene as an annoying reminder that code can also be crafted like art, unconstrained from corporate concepts like 'design patterns' and 'clean code'.
Re:What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form
by enos_feedler on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @06:51PM
(#37935866)
not just crafted like art, but actually is art. it's an executable that runs just for the sake of lighting up some hardware. Not for collecting your email address or selling you a thing.
Re:What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form
by OrangeMusic on Sunday October 22, 2023 @07:18AM
(#37974409)
Annoying? You mean refreshing. I don't see why these 2 things have to be a conflict. For business software, of course correctness and maintainability are paramount. For demos and games, of course performance and "quick and dirty" are more important. I'd say most developers can do both and know when to do one or the other.
Re:What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form
by bhouston on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @06:54PM
(#37935900)
Huh?
The demo scene is a bunch of kids having fun and learning algorithms primarily. To tell them that they need to write unit tests is ridiculous. They will have time to learn about large scale architecture and unit tests in time - by why not try to have fun for a bit?
Shadertoy isn’t meant to be reusable/production code. It is meant to be a fun computer graphics algorithm place. A place to experiment and learn.
We can take the fun out of coder later - that is what paying jobs are for. Why not have some spaces for fun?
Re:What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form
by stevebmark on Thursday October 19, 2023 @12:47PM
(#37945256)
No, go the other direction. Once those kids start working on code that other people use, the poison can cause them to shun compile steps, types, tests, build processes, comments, module organization.
Re:What is the Demoscene? An obscure but influential art form
by feffe on Thursday October 19, 2023 @03:02PM
(#37947139)
Hmm, I was a hang around back in the day. Not one of the big boys. But I got to say some of the young kids that I hung around with then had more skills than many I've worked with in the industry since. Going on my 25th year as a "professional" SW developer.